City 17 Survivors

Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance
15 mm

(This post has a soundtrack) 

Well, I finally finished my "dream miniatures" that I started back in March.  Painting these was a genuine pleasure, despite having to squeeze them in around the ever-increasing time constraints of "real life".

Not perfect likenesses, of course.  Gordon looks less nerdy and a bit more badass in opaque sunglasses, and I rather like darker-skinned Alyx.  I converted the boxy, generic gun that was on the original sculpt to at least resemble the Combine Pulse Rifle from the game - an incredibly potent weapon.  With more sculpting mojo, I might have tried for the Gravity Gun...  As for painting, I wanted figures that would really "pop", and so went with the high-contrast style that I'm getting better at (as well as contrasting Gordon's colorful armour with Alyx's subdued street clothes).

The base turned out well in my opinion, I didn't want anything too flashy that would distract from the figures.  But I think it's suitably thematic.

Klaatu Barada Nikto

Gort
15 mm

Barely a paint job at all, really.  The figure is from 15mm.co.uk.

Sidebar: The Day The Earth Stood Still, as classic as it may be, has got to be one of the most BORING films I've ever seen.  It's not just "different era slow", or "arty Solaris/2001 slow" it's sloooooooooow.  Of course you can't fault the moral message about the barbarity of war, but for better or worse this is not a film that has aged well.  Then again, I don't like The Maltese Falcon either, so maybe I am just a barbarian :/

"Gettin' real tired of your sh*t, Robot Monster."

Judgement Arrives

Mega City Judge
15 mm

A 15mm.co.uk figure, obviously inspired by a certain quasi-fascist comic book hero.  The pose is a bit static but the likeness itself is about as close as you're going to get without running afoul of THE LAW.

Something a little different

Carcassone Scoring Markers
28 mm

I thought our copy of the tile-laying strategy game Carcassone could do with an improvement - namely giving the players personas in the form of figures matching the colours of the "meeples" used as game pieces.  These will go on the scoring track rather than being used in the game itself:

So now when you play our game, you're not just picking a colour you like, you can play as a character... do you want to be the Abbess, the Burgher, the Warrior Lord, the Noblewoman, or the Warrior Lady?  My original plan was to do proper paint jobs with the respective colours as themes, but "ain't nobody got time for that" and this way I won't feel as bad when the paint gets all banged up :P (hopefully the thick gloss varnish will protect them somewhat)

Thief of Catan
28 mm

And another board-game-related project: a tabletop quality paint job on a nice Werner Klocke sculpt.  This figure is destined for a friend's copy of the addictive game Settlers of Catan, where one of the pieces is a thief who can steal players' resources.

Jean Jockey (Half Life 2 WIP)

Alyx's jeans, a.k.a. sometimes we can rise to a painting challenge:

Ooh, me aching eyeballs.  But, so far so good...  I enjoy painting denim, for some reason that worn, faded blue look is so satisfying.

The Underground Menace

21st-century biological research revealed that naked mole rats possessed truly remarkable abilities:  resistance to pain, low-oxygen atmospheres and ionizing radiation, as well as the effects of cancer and aging.  However, centuries passed before the mechanisms behind these were fully understood, and the necessary technology available to transfer these advantages to genetically engineered human beings.

Astr-O-Myne Corporation's interest in exploiting the mineral riches of newly-explored extrasolar planets conveniently coincided with these advances.  Robots were fine for chewing through relatively homogenous space rocks.  But for planetary mining, Astr-O-Myne required a new and exceptionally hardy breed of human workers.  Arrangements were made with certain Terran governments wishing to reduce crowded prison conditions, and the first genetic experiments were a spectacular success.  The new miners were stronger, tougher, and instinctively knew their way around tunnel networks.  And best of all, they had little choice in the matter: aside from their lifetime contracts with the company, the gene transfer resulted in a pallid, warty appearance that set them apart from normal human society.

"Mole Men"
15 mm

 

It was only a matter of time, however, before these underground super-men and women felt their working conditions had become intolerable, and decided to throw off their corporate shackles...

Insurrectionist miners emerge from a reconnaissance tunnel to search a company outpost.

I've been working on these for a while, and figured I'd finish them up before I really got going on my Half-Life figures.  These miniatures are "Titan Scouts" from Rebel minis.  The papercraft buildings are "IKubes" and a PODS container, downloadable for free from Topo Solitario papercraft.


(Obligatory link to Spacejacker's different take on the same figures)

Black Mesa Survivor

Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance
15 mm

"So Gordon, nice day huh?"
"..."

So I finally decided to tackle these two figures, Khurasan's "Dave Rimmer and Desiree Kim", pretty decent proxies for the protagonist of Half-Life 2 and his surprisingly resilient NPC sidekick.  It's a bit intimidating.  They're some of the most amazing miniature sculpts I've ever seen, in ANY scale let alone 15 mm!  The incredible paint job (edit: by Jen Haley, so yeah) posted on Khurasan's website doesn't help... O_O

Anyway, I hope my results are even half as good... I did try to make a cool base for them, matching the game's post-invasion wasteland atmosphere.  This was done mostly with Instant Mold: taking a texture impression of a rough stone and dabbing the IM against the putty base until it looked irregular enough.  The half-buried drum and tires were duplicated from some bitz using IM, and pressed into the base material.  It doesn't perfectly match my headcrabs, but it's close enough and looks good IMO.